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What Sleep Says About Your Health

Frequently needing to pee in the middle of the night might indicate a health problemTRUTH

That first stumble to the bathroom in the dark can be chalked up to the beer you drank watching the Knicks game. The second one can spell trouble. "If you habitually take two or more bathroom trips a night, you probably have obstructive sleep apnea," says Alex Chediak, M. D., medical director of the Miami Sleep Disorders Center.

With sleep apnea, the soft tissue at the back of your throat blocks your upper airway during sleep, stopping your breathing for anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute or even longer. This can occur hundreds of times in a night, depriving you of restorative deep sleep and starving your vital organs of oxygen. No wonder sleep apnea has been linked to heart disease, hypertension, and mood disorders.

But why does it wake you up to pee? Because those mini-suffocations result in lower circulating oxygen levels, your heart pumps harder, raising your blood pressure. As excess fluid builds up in your veins, a feedback loop triggers the release of a pressure-relieving diuretic, making you pee.

An enlarged prostate and high blood sugar can also prompt middle-of-the-night bowl breaks. But with those conditions, says Dr. Chediak, you'll pee a lot day and night.

Snooze strategy: Raising the pillow end of your bed by a few inches can help prevent that tissue from blocking your throat. Snoring could also be waking you in the middle of the night, and one major cause is nasal obstruction. Wash out mucus and irritants by mixing 1/4 teaspoon of table salt in 2 cups of warm water and flushing your nose twice a day using a medical or bulb syringe. Japanese researchers found that people with nasal obstruction were twice as likely to experience daytime fatigue as people with clear passageways. For video instruction on the technique, visit mayoclinic.com and search "nasal irrigation."

If the peeing persists around the clock, schedule a prostate exam and have your blood-sugar level checked by your doctor after an overnight fast.